Wedgewood Limited Partnership, which includes Columbus developer Charles J. Ruma, now will ask for "significant damages" because it could not develop the site it owns as a Walmart, said Columbus lawyer Bruce Ingram.

Ingram said he plans to ask U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley to schedule a hearing in which the partnership will seek several million dollars in compensatory damages and legal fees.

Township trustees, all of whom are lawyers who noted that yesterday's ruling was a 2-1 decision, plan to seek a rehearing by the full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, township Administrator Dave Anderson said yesterday.

The trustees probably will ask Marbley to postpone a damages hearing while they ask for the rehearing, said their Columbus lawyer, Scott Campbell. It's at the court's discretion whether to rehear the appeal.

The appeals panel upheld a 2008 ruling in which Marbley ruled that the township's reasoning in denying the zoning permit was unconstitutionally vague and that the township's subsequent actions violated the partnership's constitutional right to due process.

A 34-acre parcel that Wedgewood owns at Sawmill Parkway and North Hampton Drive was proposed as the site of a Walmart Supercenter.

Township officials denied a zoning permit in 2004, determining that the 220,598-square-foot building exceeded the limits of a "floating maximum" cap of 500,000 square feet of commercial space that the township had set for the Wedgewood Commerce Center. Because 390,611 square feet had been used for other commercial development, there was room for only 109,389 square feet, officials said.

The Wedgewood partnership disagreed with that interpretation.

The township had approved Wedgewood in 1991 as a planned unit development combining office, commercial and residential space. It approved negotiated development standards for the center in 1992, which allowed for 220,857 square feet of commercial space.

When Wedgewood proposed a Walmart in 2003, residents objected. In 2004, the township adopted new zoning "instructions" that, in effect, amended the 1991 planned unit development without notifying Wedgewood or holding a hearing, the appeals court found.

This violated the developer's federal constitutional right to due process, said Appeals Judges Richard Allen Griffin and Raymond M. Kethledge. James G. Carr, a senior district judge designated to sit on the appeals panel, dissented.

After Marbley ruled in 2008, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. canceled its option to buy the property.

mlane@dispatch.com

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